Introductory Remarks

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5 Introductory Remarks Enough ink has been spilled in quarreling over feminism, now practically over, and perhaps we should say no more about it. It is still talked about, however, for the voluminous nonsense uttered during the last century seems to have done little to illuminate the problem. 1 This sentence does not originate from a recent discussion, but was chosen as the opening line in The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, so as to point out from the beginning the ever-present assumption that the problem with the woman s place in society has already been solved. Instead, according to Beauvoir, there remains only confusion. If we are to gain understanding, we should get out of these ruts; we should discard the vague notions of superiority, inferiority and equality which have hitherto corrupted every discussion of the subject and start afresh. 2 More than fifty years later, we find ourselves at a similar point. Why do we need any more feminist theories if everything has been said already? In this regard, writing a book about Simone de Beauvoir could seem quite superfluous. Against her intentions Beauvoir s approach was shelved as equality feminism, and many feminists of our present time consider her to be outmoded, historical heritage at best. 1 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1989, p Ibidem, p

6 Why therefore should a new book surface about the work of Simone de Beauvoir, why now an English version of the German original 3? The book at hand for the first time offers a detailed introduction into Beauvoir s philosophy where the focus is on her concepts of freedom and recognition and their impact on a philosophy of gender. At the same time the importance of philosophy for feminist theory as a whole will be emphasized. It will be shown that Beauvoir is much more than a simple equality feminist and that she posed questions that are nowadays at the center of feminist interest. At the beginning of the book a short chapter will deal with the reception of Beauvoir s work in the English-speaking scientific community as regards discussions relevant in our context. The feminist theorists of difference reproach Beauvoir for equating being human with masculinity, for espousing a theory of equality, and for depreciating being a woman. In the period of feminist theory which followed, the subject of feminism itself, namely being a woman, was questioned. During the conflicts which then arose between essentialism and constructivism Beauvoir s work remained unnoticed because it was identified solely with the feminist theory of equality. Both positions are being regarded here as insufficient, and the thesis is evolved that it was not on any account Beauvoir s intention to create a model of equality, but also to pose the question of difference. Which ethical, social and cultural consequences would have to be drawn 3 Susanne Moser, Freiheit und Anerkennung bei Simone de Beauvoir, Tübingern: edition discord, As regards the English version I owe thanks to Michael Harlan Lyman for his ambitious draft translation and to Rebecca White as an expert proof-reader. 10

7 so that the new woman could finally manifest herself? The woman would have to shed her old skin, writes Beauvoir in The Second Sex, and cut her own new clothes. 4 To emancipate woman would mean to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man and to offer her the possibility to posit herself independently. 5 This question of Beauvoir corresponds to the endeavors of the theories of feminist difference, namely to understand femininity in a positive way. But, whereas feminist theories of difference take an unambiguous female identity for granted, linked to the female body, Beauvoir links being a woman to the ambiguity of existence. Similarly, as in post-modern feminism, existentialism rejects any fixed pre-assigned identity. Beauvoir emphasizes that, independent of how important contributions of biology, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism might be, we shall hold that the body, the sexual life, and the resources of technology exist concretely for man only in so far as he grasps them in the total perspective of his existence." 6 In the following, it will be demonstrated that Beauvoir approaches the problem of existence on three different levels: on the level of the situation, of the body and of the identity, which however must not be considered separately. The body is interlinked directly with existence, it is a synthetic unity, that itself is to be understood only through the situation, its relation to the world, whereby the situation is not something given but reveals itself only in the act of existence. Beauvoir emphasizes that for the human being nature has reality only to the extent that it is in- 4 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p

8 volved in his activity his own nature not excepted. 7 In truth, however, the nature of things is no more immutably given, once for all, than is historical reality. 8 She does not even regard sexual difference as a necessary attribute to existence, it seems conceivable to her that the perpetuation of the species does not necessitate sexual differentiation (...) we can imagine a parthenogenetic or hermaphroditic society. 9 But also with regard to the transgender debate, Beauvoir s approach creates stimulus. Gender is not only something constructed, something that one is for others and through others as it is assumed in most sociological theories of gender construction but is also connected to one s self-perception. So Beauvoir speaks explicitly of the woman being a female only to the extent to which she feels herself as such (...) It is not nature that defines woman; it is she who defines herself by dealing with nature on her own account in her emotional life. 10 Our studies rest on the assumption that Beauvoir s existentialist approach must be taken seriously, in that it provides the basis for the analysis of gender relations. Therefore connections to Sartre are being established in order to show where Beauvoir is in accordance or in opposition to his philosophy, and to expel existing prejudices, for example that his for-itself represents a body-less and positionless absolute freedom. Additionally it is demonstrated that Beauvoir, contrary to Sartre, derives freedom not only from transcendence, but also from will. Beauvoir is defining the 7 Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p

9 notion of ambiguity not only in dependence on Sartre, but also in connection with Hegel. The human being tries to escape from his natural condition without, however, being able to freeing himself from it. 11 Beauvoir emphasizes that the fundamental ambiguity of the human being must not be concealed, or as in Hegel s work, surpassed on a higher level, yet as will be shown in the course of this study in certain places Beauvoir adheres to this very idea. Modernity devaluates all processes that happen by nature without free creation by the human being as a stage that needs to be overcome and mastered. Repeatedly, Beauvoir places the overcoming of life, where you take control of the instant and mold the future 12, in contrast to a life of animalistic nature. By way of analogy she devalues the work connected with reproduction mostly performed by women. One of the goals of this book is to point out the conflicts in which Beauvoir is involved by making use of the emancipation potential of classical German philosophy, especially Hegel. Building on this philosophical tradition of liberation she criticizes its misogynic tendency and yet partly falls victim to it herself. For instance she will maintain throughout her life that one should not orient oneself on female values. Believing in female values would imply a belief in female nature, something she had always fought against. 13 Regrettably, she does not arrive at the same conclusion when referring to male values: instead of questioning them in the same way using the existentialist and de- 11 Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, Secaucus, N. J.: Citadel Press Book, Carol Publishing Group Edition 1997, p Ibidem, p Alice Schwarzer, Simone de Beauvoir. Rebellin und Wegbereiterin, Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1999, p

10 constructivistic approach, they are still approved of and taken for granted by her as a general point of reference. Using her work, also the conflicts are shown that arise when modern emancipation discourse and post-modern deconstructivism clash. In a detailed study of these conflicting tendencies the thesis is elaborated that Beauvoir s work can be seen as a pivot between modernity and postmodernity. The structure of the book follows the development of Beauvoir s work from her earlier writings up to The Second Sex also including her late study on Old Age and her autobiographies. Beginning with Pyrrhus et Cinéas 14 it will be shown how Beauvoir investigates the meaning of projects, and the need to justify existence. Only the concrete realization of one's projects, not a pre-assigned order from birth onward, can determine one's place in the world. To reduce a human being to his/her 15 status acquired by birth is for Beauvoir not only an anachronism, but also the highest form of suppression because here a decrease of transcendence into immanence takes place. Beauvoir herself claims to point out generally valid suppression mechanisms against women of all cultural backgrounds and of all eras. This general claim will be rejected in this study and the thesis is supported that Beauvoir s concept of the woman as the Absolute Other reflects the exclusion mechanisms specific to modernity. Beauvoir appears to be a precursor of post-modern justice theories, by pointing out the subtle ex- 14 Simone de Beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, Paris: Gallimard 1944 (no English translation available). 15 We use this politically correct solution in our text, but have refrained from rewording quotations in that respect. 14

11 clusion mechanisms produced by certain myths and simulacra as well as by fixed qualities ascribed to women thereby preventing them from taking part in the process of recognition years on from the publication of The Second Sex these exclusion mechanisms can no longer halt the emancipation of women in terms of legal equality and participation in public life. But as long as life projects differ, depending on whether one is in charge of reproductive work or not, and as long as the ascription of this duty is linked to a certain gender construction, these subtle exclusion mechanisms will still prevail. In light of this there can never be enough said or written about all these problems. 16 See: Yvanka B. Raynova. "Für eine postmoderne Ethik der Gerechtigkeit: Simone de Beauvoir und Jean-François Lyotard, in: Yvanka B. Raynova, Susanne Moser (eds.), Simone de Beauvoir. 50 Jahre nach dem anderen Geschlecht, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag 2004, p At this point I would like to extend my special thanks to my colleague Yvanka B. Raynova, phenomenologist, expert on Sartre and translator of his works into Bulgarian, for her critical reading, advice and encouragement when I was writing the book at hand. 15

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13 On the Reception of Beauvoir s Work After its publication in 1949, The Second Sex caused a scandal 17 and was ardently discussed, but its largest effect was to reveal itself later. By the end of the sixties, The Second Sex had turned into the Bible of the Women s Liberation Movement. In Europe and the USA women-selfawareness groups formed, in which The Second Sex was read and discussed, not as a theoretical work but in connection with personal experiences. But vehement resistance soon motioned and created a growing gap between the Women s Liberation Movement, its Bible and its mother. 18 Within the developing feminist theories increasing reservation was expressed against Beauvoir s theoretical approach. Therefore the discussion of Beauvoir s work must be viewed in connection and in interaction with the different phases of feminist theory. Closely connected is the question of the importance accorded to philosophy in feminist theories, either accusing philosophy of male thinking and rejecting it altogether or trying to position it in a new way. 17 Beauvoir writes in her memoirs Force of Circumstance, that after the publishing of The Second Sex she had been reproached of being unsatisfied, frigid, priapic, nymphomaniac, lesbian, a hundred times aborted, I was everything, even an unmarried mother. Mauriac had written to one of the staff members of Les Temps Modernes: Your employer s vagina has no secrets from me. He began a series in Le Figaro Littéraire urging the youth of France to condemn pornography in general and Beauvoir s articles in particular. Its success had been slight. Simone de Beauvoir, Force of Circumstance, Harmondsworth: Pinguin Books 1968, p Jo-Ann Pilardi, Feminists Read The Second Sex, in: Margaret A. Simons (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995, p

14 We must also take into account that it was difficult for Beauvoir s work to be acknowledged within academic circles, since it was more prestigious to write about a male author than a female one. 19 For a long while it was Beauvoir s personal life and her relation to Sartre which was a point of interest, as opposed to her work. The Second Sex was not considered as a philosophical work, but as a sociological one, and as the companion of Sartre, Beauvoir was seen to be simply applying his existential philosophy. Also Beauvoir regarded herself more as an author of novels than a philosopher, thus contributing herself to the fact that her philosophical questions were not seriously discussed for a long time. Hazel Barnes, translator of Sartre s Being and Nothingness, saw in Beauvoir s novel She Came to Stay, an illustration of Sartre s Being and Nothingness. One is virtually able to sense, Hazel Barnes wrote, how much Beauvoir had been carried by the inspiration to elaborate Sartre s abstract principles into real life. However, according to Barnes, it cannot be ruled out that Beauvoir might have contributed a lot to Sartre s philosophy, and that he may be immensely indebted to her. Barnes however wanted to show that the novel had served as documentation for Sartre s theory, independent of who may have had which idea first. 20 These questions also preoccupied Margaret A. Simons right from the onset of her Beauvoir research in 1969: not only did she want to prove Beauvoir s philosophical auton- 19 See: Elizabeth Fallaize (ed.), Simone de Beauvoir: A Critical Reader, London/New York: Routledge 1998, p. 7 and p Hazel Barnes, Self-Encounter in She Came to Stay, in: Elizabeth Fallaize (ed.), Simone de Beauvoir. A Critical Reader, London/New York: Routledge 1998, p. 157, see also footnote 1 on page

15 omy in relation to Sartre, but additionally she wanted to point out the large philosophical influence Beauvoir had on Sartre s philosophy. In her book of 1999 she even claims that Beauvoir had already anticipated the philosophy of existentialism in her early diaries. 21 Since these diaries were not accessible before 1990, it took her almost 30 years to substantiate her early suppositions. 22 Also Kate and Edward Fullbrook had to wait for the publication of Sartre s War Diaries and Beauvoir s Letters to Sartre in order to be able to present the relationship of Sartre and Beauvoir in a new light. 23 The Fullbrooks developed the theory that Beauvoir not only had a large influence on Sartre s work, but that Beauvoir had formulated her own philosophical system before Sartre, which he then adopted and presented as his own. 24 Regardless of the extent to which we can fol- 21 Margaret A. Simons, Beauvoir and The Second Sex. Feminism, Race, and the Origins of Existentialism, Boston: Rowman & Littlefield 1999, see especially the preface. 22 In 1986 Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, adopted daughter of Simone de Beauvoir, found Beauvoir s handwritten Carnets de Jeunesse. In 1990 she gave them to the national library, where Margaret A. Simons could study them. See: Margaret A. Simons, Beauvoir s Early Philosophy: The 1927 Diary. In: Margaret A. Simons, Beauvoir and The Second Sex, Rowman&Littlefield, Boston 1999, p ; see also: Margaret A. Simons, The Beginnings of Beauvoir s Existential Phenomenology, in: Wendy O Brien and Lester Embree (ed.), The Existential Phenomenology of Simone de Beauvoir, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001, p Kate and Edward Fullbrook, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre: The Remaking of a Twentieth-Century Legend, New York: Basic Books Kate Fullbrook and Edward Fullbrook, Sartre s Secret Key, in: Margaret A. Simons (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press 1995, p

16 low these assumptions, since the 1990s it has certainly not been possible any more to regard Beauvoir as Sartre s student, as was still the case in Le petit Larousse of In 1990 Margaret A. Simons together with Azizah Y. Al- Hibri published in Hypatia Reborn 26 a Beauvoir-focus, compiled predominantly of contributions to a philosophical conference held in 1984, named The Second Sex: A New Beginning. 27 In contrast to the conventional opinion, that regarded The Second Sex as antiquated, outdated, determined by male thinking and as sheer application of Sartre s philosophy, Simons not only emphasized the importance of The Second Sex as the point of origin for feminist theory, but regarded it as the basis of feminist philosophy in general and the basis for every further philosophical differentiation. Yet, Simons stresses that in the course of time something like a negative defense against the big mother had developed in feminist consciousness: Who I am began with How I m not like her. 28 However the unification of such different approaches as feminism and philosophy to feminist philosophy incurred difficulties. The claim of feminism and the Women s Liberation Movement to judge everything directly from one s own experience and to also benefit from it was incorporated into feminist philosophy and resulted in a contradic- 25 See also: Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir. The Making of an Intellectual Woman, Cambridge MA: Blackwell 1994, p Hypatia Reborn is the first number of the new edition of the journal Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy. 27 Azizah Y. Al-Hibri and Margaret A. Simons (eds.), Hypatia Reborn. Essays in Feminist Philosophy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press Ibidem, p

17 tion with the claim of philosophy to be objective and universally valid. So the question arose as to whether The Second Sex could be regarded as a feminist work at all, deviating from the essential feminist assumption that one always has to take personal experience as a starting point: in The Second Sex Beauvoir however avoids speaking of herself. Michèle Le Dœuff dicusses this problem in her book Hipparchia s Choice. 29 She also relates her own difficulty of being at the same time a woman, a philosopher and a feminist, directly to the case of Beauvoir-Sartre. 30 She holds that since classical antiquity women had gained access to philosophy by performing the role of the loving admirer and the devoted disciple. The Second Sex, which is based on existentialist ethics, could be seen as a sort of wedding gift to Sartre, in which Beauvoir gives a singular confirmation of the validity of Sartre s work: Your thought makes possible an understanding of women s condition, your philosophy sets me on the road to my emancipation your truth will make me free. 31 Alluding to the relation between Héloïse and Abelard Michèle Le Dœuff refers to this phenomenon as the Héloïse complex. 32 Why, she wondered, had the brilliant student of philosophy later left philosophy to Sartre? Toril Moi picked up this question in her book of 1994, agreeing with Michèle Le Dœuff when comparing Simone and Jean-Paul with Héloïse and Abelard. For Toril Moi Michèle Le Dœuff had explained very well why Beauvoir 29 See: Michèle Le Dœuff, Hipparchia s Choice. An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, Oxford UK & Cambridge MA: Blackwell 1991, p Ibidem, p. 1 and p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p. 162,

18 had surrendered as a philosopher in relation to Sartre. In her Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter Beauvoir recounted that in 1929 on a summer morning at the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, after trying to demonstrate to Sartre her pluralistic morality in a three hour long debate, she arrived at the conclusion that her arguments could not stand up to his. Her philosophical defeat had led to the painful loss of her faith in her sovereign and exclusive status as a thinking being. 33 At the same time so Toril Moi this would enable Beauvoir to equip Sartre with all phallic qualities, because if she were unable to admire him, she would not be able to love him. 34 And so Beauvoir was to put herself intellectually and philosophically in second place after Sartre for the rest of her life. Furthermore, Beauvoir guarded the myth of unity between herself and Sartre as one of the most fundamental elements of her identity. However much she had tried to liberate herself from some negative aspects of this myth, it remained the only untouchable dogma of her life. 35 Toril Moi s interest focuses as a matter of priority on Beauvoir s person as the title of her book already suggests: Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. In her work she assumes that there can be no methodological difference between life and text. Just like for Freud 33 Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir. The Making of an Intellectual Woman, p Ibidem, p. 18. Toril Moi quotes a passage from Beauvoir s memoirs: If in the absolute sense a man, who was a member of the privileged species and already had a flying start over me, did not count more than I did, I was forced to the conclusion that in relative sense he counted less: in order for me to recognize him as my equal, he would have to prove himself my superior. 35 Ibidem, p

19 the person only reveals itself in a text Beauvoir reveals herself through an intertextual network of narrative, philosophical and autobiographical texts and letters. 36 Does this apply in reverse as well? Can and should Beauvoir s work be interpreted in respect to her person? Should the interpretation of The Second Sex take into account that Beauvoir was a woman, that she was the longtime companion of a famous philosopher and a lot more besides? Toril Moi holds an ambivalent view thereon. On the one hand she mixes the personal and the philosophical regarding Sartre and Beauvoir, on the other hand she appears quite tired of the permanent discussion of who was superior to whom intellectually. Furthermore, she accuses the patriarchal criticism of presupposing that the work of an intellectual woman has to be judged in relation to that of her lover. 37 In turn she criticizes those feminists who judge Beauvoir all too strictly, even though it is no surprise that these women would feel the need to separate themselves from such a strong mother imago. For Moi the largest paradox is that feminists, who were influenced by the French feminist theory developed in the 1970s, either ignored Beauvoir or depreciated her as a theoretical fossil. 38 By the end of the 1970s a stage of feminism had developed which Iris Young later on referred to as gynocentric feminism. 39 Femininity was not regarded as the cause for discrimination of the woman but represented a positive value, from which the creation of a new and better world 36 Ibidem, p. 3 and Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Iris Marion Young, Humanism, Gynocentrism and Feminist Politics, in: Women s Studies International Forum, Vol. 8, Nr. 3, p

20 could be undertaken. According to Young, suppression does not consist in denying female self-realization, as postulated in humanist feminism, which was supported by Beauvoir and most feminists of the 19th and 20th century, but rather in rejecting and depreciating the female body and female activities through an all too instrumentalist and authoritative male culture. Contrary to humanist feminism that presupposes the ideal of an universal human nature demanding equal rights and equal chances for everybody and which therefore is also labeled as theory of equality, gynocentric feminism affirms uniqueness and difference and is therefore often referred to as difference feminism. Young accuses Beauvoir of equating being human with masculinity without questioning the common definitions of being human in Western society and of devaluating traditional female activities like motherhood and housework in the same way as patriarchal culture. Through the differentiation of transcendence and immanence, Beauvoir s ontology would reproduce the opposites of culture and nature, freedom and bare life, mind and body rooted in Western tradition. The reproach of dualism is one of the most central criticisms directed towards The Second Sex. It can be traced back to the earliest receptions of Beauvoir s work, through all phases of feminist theory, right up until the present debate. 40 In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler writes: Despite my own previous efforts to argue the contrary, it appears that Beauvoir maintains the mind/body dualism, even as she proposes a synthesis of those terms. The preservation of 40 See Jo-Ann Pilardi, Feminists Read The Second Sex, in: Margaret A. Simons (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press 1995, p

21 that very distinction can be read as symptomatic of the phallologocentrism that Beauvoir underestimates. 41 Most feminist authors agree that the differentiation between transcendence and immanence and the devaluation of the female body and traditional female activities interrelated with it is an expression of male-dominated thinking. Differences arise only when trying to ascertain from whom the concept of the mind/body dualism originated: Sartre or Beauvoir? Judith Butler s viewpoint is indicative of those feminists who believe that Beauvoir adopted Sartre s existentialism: The radical ontological disjunction in Sartre between consciousness and the body is part of the Cartesian inheritance of his philosophy. Significantly, it is Descartes distinction that Hegel implicitly interrogates at the outset of the Master-Slave section of The Phenomenology of Spirit. Beauvoir s analysis of the masculine Subject and the feminine Other is clearly situated in Hegel s dialectic and in the Sartrian reformulation of that dialectic in the section on sadism and masochism in Being and Nothingness. Critical of the very possibility of a synthesis of consciousness and the body, Sartre effectively returns to the Cartesian problem that Hegel sought to overcome. Beauvoir insists that the body can be the instrument and situation of freedom and that sex can be the occasion for a gender that is not a reification, but a modality of freedom. 42 Michèle Le Dœuff, Judith Butler and Toril Moi see voluntarism as the source of evil in Sartre s existentialism, a philosophy, that according to Toril Moi had forced 41 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York & London: Routledge, 1999, p Ibidem, p. 17, footnote

22 Beauvoir to argue for free choices of the individual, despite being aware of the social conditioning of women s lives. 43 The description of female sexuality in Sartre s Being and Nothingness was criticized in particular for being sexist and created resentment. The existentialist project according to Moi is represented as movement upward or forward, since male erection and ejaculation underlie the notion of the project. If Sartre describes the project metaphorically as a throwing forward or a lifting up, for Beauvoir the non-project becomes a fall or degradation. To launch concrete projects in the world becomes a case of throwing oneself forward into the future: on this logic only linear projects count. Repetitive, circular, cyclical, erratic or random modes of activity, ranging from flirtation to housework, can never hope to be classified as authentically transcendent. 44 It is striking that hardly anyone took the effort to prove these accusations in Sartre s texts, let alone entering into a serious discussion with his philosophy. However, there are also other interpretations concerning the transcendence-immanence problem in Beauvoir s work. At the end of the 1990 s research on Beauvoir turns towards her philosophical contributions, intending to elaborate her autonomy as a philosopher in her own right, independent from Sartre. So for example Sartre s existentialism is no longer seen as the sole influence on Beauvoir in The Second Sex: other influences are now examined. Eva Lundgren-Gothlin points out the importance of the influence that Kojève s Hegel interpretation had on The Second Sex and thereby opposes the prevalent opinion that Beau- 43 Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir, p. 34. See also p Ibidem, p

23 voir was only able to access Hegel s dialectic through Sartre s own reformulation in Being and Nothingness. 45 In contrast to Sartre s ahistorical position, The Second Sex gains a historical aspect through Kojève s Hegel interpretation and also the possibility of overcoming the conflict through reciprocal recognition. According to Lundgren- Gothlin Beauvoir had succeeded in developing a social philosophy long before Sartre, seeking on the one hand the reasons for suppression, and offering on the other hand a means of liberation. However, in Hegel s theory as well as in Kojève s, women would be excluded from the fight for recognition. This distinction between the sexes is made explicit when Kojève says: The family is a human by the fact that its (male) members struggle for recognition and have slaves; they are accordingly Masters. 46 Lundgren- Gothlin emphasizes that, in her opinion, Beauvoir does not equate the woman as other interpretations of Beauvoir do with the servant, but regarded the woman as the absolute Other due to the fact that she never participated in the master-servant-dialectic. 47 While the man rose above nature, crossed and transcended it during his fight for recognition, the woman remained closer to nature due to her female body and her ability to give life, thus making it possible to become a mediator for man, mediating between nature and man himself. Beauvoir would have demanded that women have to free themselves from nature just as men do: on the one hand, through the Marxist concept of the par- 45 Eva Lundgren-Gothlin, Sex & Existence. Simone de Beauvoir s The Second Sex, Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 1996, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p

24 ticipation in the work process, and on the other hand through the free disposal of their body through autonomous birth control. 48 Both Hegel and Marx associated motherhood more to animalistic activities than to human ones and, according to Lundgren-Gothlin, unfortunately instead of criticizing this androcentric point of view Beauvoir adopted it. 49 Like Hegel, Beauvoir contrasts life and spirit and saw the devaluation of the woman as a necessary step towards the development of mankind. The misogynic dualism in Beauvoir s work does not therefore stem from Sartre s existentialism as has been assumed until now but rather is due to the fact that Beauvoir connected Hegel s masterservant-dialectic to a theory of history inspired by Marx in order to show the suppression of the woman as a collective, social and historical phenomenon. In Being and Nothingness Sartre makes no specification of what should be counted as an intentional action. Thus, women s domestic labor could very well fall into the category of transcendence. In The Second Sex, however, through the influence of Hegel and Marx, transcendence attains a specific meaning due to the content it obtains from certain genderspecific activities within society. The area of society, where male activities traditionally take place is called transcendence, whereas immanence is equated with the area of traditional female activities. 50 Many interpreters of Beauvoir agree that her independence from Sartre is also shown in the fact that she concerned herself with social questions long before Sartre. 48 Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p

25 Without this shift from Sartrean ontology to sociology and politics, The Second Sex could not have been written. 51 Sonia Kruks points out that Beauvoir had already anticipated many of the ideas, which Sartre later realized in Notebooks for an Ethics and Critique of Dialectical Reason. She emphasizes Beauvoir s essential influence on Sartre s entire intellectual work 52 : the absolute and the radically individualistic concept of freedom elaborated in Being and Nothingness is being replaced by a more nuanced and socially mediated concept of freedom. 53 She points out that Beauvoir had already demonstrated in 1945 in her review of Merleau-Ponty s Phenomenology of Perception in Les Temps Modernes 54 that contrary to Sartre, the subject in Merleau-Ponty s work is never a pure for-itself. Later on, in 1955, Beauvoir went back to her analysis of 1945, now claiming that Sartre s philosophy was after all, like Merleau-Ponty s, a philosophy of embodied subjectivity and intersubjectivity. 55 Nevertheless, Kruks insists that Beauvoir s concept of the subject, as an embodied consciousness and as a socially situated and conditioned freedom lies closer to Merleau-Ponty s work than to that of Sartre. She claims that Beauvoir s development of a new concept of 51 Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir. The Making of an Intellectual Woman, p Sonia Kruks, Teaching Sartre About Freedom, in: Margaret A. Simons (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, University Park Pennsylvania State University 1995, p. 94; see also: Sonia Kruks, Retrieving Experience. Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2001, p Ibidem, p Simone de Beauvoir, La Phénoménologie de la Perception de M. Merleau-Ponty, in : Les Temps Modernes, 1.2 (Nov. 1945), p Sonia Kruks, Teaching Sartre about Freedom, p

26 subjectivity had begun already in 1944 in Pyrrhus et Cinéas. 56 The concept of the interdependence of free subjects was supplemented in 1947 in The Ethics of Ambiguity with the concept of socially embedded subjectivity, leading to a new concept of the subject in 1949 in The Second Sex, namely the subject as embodied. 57 Beauvoir shows strength in having developed a theory of oppression which showed the social conditioning of women, without rejecting the concept of individual freedom, however much women may have been oppressed, positioning her concept of subjectivity between the concept of the free and responsible individual on the one hand, and the post-structuralistic dissolving of the subject on the other. 58 In Philosophy as Passion: The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir Karen Vintges points out striking similarities between Sartre s existentialism and what has been called postmodernism : both share the idea of the impossibility of universal moral theories God and truth are dead and thus the foundations of morality have disappeared. 59 Compared to the anarchism or nomadism of Sartre, Beauvoir emerges as a moralist. 60 Time and again she had defended existentialism against accusations that it contained elements of nihilism, and tried to develop an existentialist 56 Sonia Kruks, Beauvoir: The Weight of Situation, in: Elizabeth Fallaize (ed.), Simone de Beauvoir. A Critical Reader, London and New York: Routledge 1998, p. 45, see also p Ibidem, p Ibidem. 59 Karen Vintges, Philosophy as Passion. The Thinking of Simone de Beauvoir, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1996, p Ibidem, p

27 ethics. Unlike Sartre, she had seen within existentialist philosophy a place for friendship, generosity and love. 61 Debra Bergoffen, too, claims that Beauvoir had, parallel to an ethics of the project oriented on Hegel s struggle for recognition, developed an ethics of the erotic, the erotic underlying as a phenomenological-existential and ethical category our primary orientation to the world and to others. 62 According to Bergoffen both ethics result from a revision of intentionality being split into two conflicting moments by Beauvoir: a moment that discloses being, and a moment that identifies the disclosing I with the being it discloses. For Bergoffen Beauvoir s account of the first intentional moment echoes Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, whereas the second echoes Hegel and Sartre. 63 Both Bergoffen and Vintges see in Beauvoir s conception of emotion as a positive experience a break with Sartre s solipsism, allowing to make room for love, solidarity and friendship as a moral attitude. Unlike Bergoffen in her ethics of the erotic, Vintges claims that in the course of her life at the latest in her novel The Mandarins Beauvoir had developed an ethics as art of living comparable to Michel Foucault s ethics as care of the self. 64 But whereas Beauvoir tried to develop in The Ethics of Ambiguity a positive normative ethics in terms of Kant, she later rejected the Kantian type of ethics, which knows absolute moral laws. Nevertheless she adhered to the universal prin- 61 Ibidem, p. 46 and p Debra Bergoffen, The Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir. Gendered Phenomenologies, Erotic Generosities, Albany: State University of New York Press Ibidem, p.76, Karen Vintges, Philosophy as Passion, p

28 ciple of freedom for all and the moral exigence of willing oneself free. 65 Vintges defines Beauvoir s concept of an ethics as art of living as follows: in the name of our freedom, we must create ourselves as an individual identity, styling and developing our daily behavior in all its aspects, with the aim of contributing concretely to the quality of the life of others. 66 In contrast to Foucault, who elevates life to a work of art and whom Vintges accuses of an aestheticistic elitism 67, the aesthetic moment in Beauvoir s work would represent only the form and not the content: art of living for her is the art of life and not living as work of art 68. Following the existentialist demand for articulating the essence of both the human condition in general and its subjective and temporary nature in concrete, the philosophical novel represented for Beauvoir the adequate medium for an ethics as art of living, offering the middle ground between pure philosophy and pure literature. 69 Therewith, Beauvoir can be situated close to postmodernist philosophers who argue that philosophy and literature are interwoven. 70 In her further argumentation, Vintges increasingly places Beauvoir as a person into the foreground: Beauvoir s work, especially her autobiography, can be regarded as her attempt to create a coherent identity for herself. 71 In this however, Beauvoir aimed at a certain identity, namely that 65 Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p

29 of an intellectual woman. 72 Her life project consisted of unifying two conflicting identities: being a woman, and being an intellectual. 73 It was essential for Beauvoir to be accepted as a woman. She wanted to belong to the second sex not to a third. 74 That was also the reason why Beauvoir did not define herself as a lesbian: from her viewpoint, homosexuals constituted the third sex. Only her lifelong relationship to Sartre had guaranteed that she never lost her status as a woman in spite of being an intellectual. 75 Beauvoir had not dared to position her work as being philosophical because she thought a philosophical identity would detract from her identity as a woman. Beauvoir s philosophical analysis of the relative identity of women must be seen therefore in the light of her own experience with Sartre. According to Karen Vintges in Philosophy as Passion, it was not only Beauvoir s work but also her own life which had revolved around the problem of women s relative identity: the attempt to solve this problem had turned her philosophizing into a passion. 76 Identity in general and the identity as a woman in particular seems to be something extremely unstable. Postmodernist feminists question a fixed, pregiven feminine identity: If there is something right in Beauvoir s claim that one is not born, but rather becomes a woman, Judith Butler writes in Gender Trouble it follows that woman itself is a term in process, a becoming, a constructing that 72 Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p Ibidem, p

30 cannot rightfully be said to originate or to end. 77 One could expand Beauvoir s theory radically, so that woman need not necessarily be the cultural construction of the female body and man need no longer interpret male bodies but rather new, expanded categories could emerge, that go beyond the binary man-woman and disrupt the heterosexual matrix. 78 The feminist discussion of the last years has revolved around the problems connected with a possible postmodernist loss of the subject of feminism. What would feminism fight for if there were no longer any women, if there were no more unquestionable things women have in common? In Retrieving Experience Sonia Kruks points out that we should retrieve the rich heritage of existential thought considering women s embodied experiences in order to build affective bonds among women who are in many ways radically different from each other. 79 She proposes that there are certain stable notations, certain invariants to feminine embodiment, and that these may enable women to feel with the visible physical suffering of other women more easily than that of men. Referring to Beauvoir existential philosophy one would find, that the embodied subject, although not the site of an untrammeled freedom, is more than the plaything of social and discursive forces, as postmodernists want us make believe Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, p Ibidem, p Sonia Kruks, Retrieving Experience. Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press 2001, p. 6. See also my review of this book in: L Homme. Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft, Wien: Böhlau 2004, p Ibidem, p

31 In light of this, it is no wonder that the female body again comes into the foreground of further investigations. In What is a Woman Toril Moi emphasizes the importance of Beauvoir s existential philosophy concerning the body. 81 According to Moi, by claiming that being a woman has to be seen as the background for all further discussions 82, Beauvoir had found a way of thinking about sexual difference which steers clear of the Scylla of having to eliminate her sexed subjectivity and the Charybdis of finding herself imprisoned in it. To say that the sexed body is the inevitable background for all our acts, is at once to claim that it is always a potential source of meaning, and to deny that it always holds the key to the meaning of a woman s acts. 83 Beauvoir s feminist goal was to create a society enabling women to gain access to the universality as women, neither as imitations of men nor as sexless beings, which do not exist at all. Considering this, so Toril Moi, a new reading of Beauvoir would offer a way out of the equality or difference dilemma. In her earlier book of 1994 on Beauvoir Toril Moi however had reproached the difference feminists of not understanding that Beauvoir s political plan differed radically from theirs. According to Moi, in taking for granted the assumption that effective feminist politics presupposes a theory of female identity, certain critics fail to consider 81 Toril Moi, What is a Woman? And Other Essays, New York: Oxford University Press Cf. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. xxi: But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: I am a woman ; on this truth must be based all further discussions. 83 Toril Moi, What is a Woman? And Other Essays, p

32 alternative positions. 84 For Beauvoir as for Sartre, existence precedes essence and therefore questions of identity become secondary to questions of action and choice. Toril Moi concluded then, that it is impossible to reach an understanding of Beauvoir s feminism without taking into consideration her vision of freedom. 85 Although a lot has been said on Beauvoir s feminism of freedom, her philosophical concept of freedom has rarely been investigated and if so only certain aspects were explored in depth Toril Moi, Simone de Beauvoir. The Making of an Intellectual Woman, Cambridge MA: Blackwell 1994, p Ibidem, p Anderson, Thomas C., Freedom as Supreme Value: The Ethics of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, in: American Catholic Philosophical Association: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, 50, 1976, p ; Arp, Kristana, Conceptions of Freedom in Beauvoir s The Ethics of Ambiguity, in: International Studies in Philosophy 31, no. 2, 1999, p de idem, The Bonds of Freedom, Simone de Beauvoir s Existentialist Ethics. Chicago and La Salle: Open Court 2001; John, Helen James, The Promise of Freedom in the Thought of Simone de Beauvoir: How an Infant Smiles, in: American Catholic Philosophical Association: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, 50, 1976, p ; Kruks, Sonia, Simone de Beauvoir: Teaching Sartre about Freedom, in: Ronald Aronson and Adrian van den Hoven (ed), Sartre Alive, Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1991, p ; reprinted in: Margaret A. Simons (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir, University Park: Pennsylvania University Press 1995, p ; Kruks, Sonia, "Freedoms That Matter: Subjectivity and Situation in the Work of Beauvoir, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty", in: de idem, Retrieving Experience. Subjectivity and Recognition in Feminist Politics. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 2001, p ; Moi, Toril, A Feminism of Freedom: Simone de Beauvoir. In, What is a Woman? And Other Essays, New York: Oxford University Press 36

33 Part I Ambiguity, Freedom, Morality The conception of freedom 87 constitutes the basis for the entire philosophical work of Simone de Beauvoir. In her memoirs The Prime of Life she emphasizes: liberty, the foundation stone of all human values, is the only end capable of justifying men s undertakings. 88 Rather than at once developing a complete theory of freedom she presents in her philosophical essay Pyrrhus et Cinéas those philosophical ideas which she had already discussed in her novel The Blood of Others. She reflects upon Sartre s Being and Nothingness, with which she was familiar from Sartre s manuscript and long joint conversations: Being exists in the form of projects, not determined by death as claimed by Heidegger but by certain goals. In Pyrrhus et Cinéas, besides discussing the sense of human projects in general, she touches another essential issue: that of the Other and the need to find some positive basis for morality ; Raynova, Yvanka B., Liberty: The Destiny of Simone de Beauvoir, in: Dharshana International, 105, January 1987, no. 1, p The French liberté in Beauvoir s work has been translated in the literature with liberty or freedom. We use freedom in our text. 88 Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, Harmondsworth: Pinguin Books 1965, p Cf. Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, p. 549: In the second section, my problem was to find some positive basis for morality. 37

34 In her philosophical essay The Ethics of Ambiguity Beauvoir attempts to extend the existentialist conception of freedom by differentiating between freedom and liberation. If freedom, as Sartre claims, is a characteristic of transcendence and thus of Being itself, if this freedom is a donnée, how can we properly regard it as an goal? The concrete possibilities offered to human beings are very often unequal. Beauvoir therefore does not regard freedom solely as the basis for an existentialist theory of morality, ontology, epistemology and social philosophy, but also as the final end for morality itself that has yet to be attained. In The Second Sex she demands the realization of a society that offers all men, women included, concrete possibilities to realize their projects. Freedom is now regarded in connection with the problem of the recognition of the subject and is placed into a broader social and political framework. Beauvoir s concept of freedom was therefore subject to constant development and change. In the following this process of development will be explored hermeneutically and reconstructed critically in a detailed analysis. Pyrrhus et Cinéas In her first philosophical essay Pyrrhus et Cinéas Beauvoir approaches the problem of freedom from a specific perspective questioning the sense of human projects in general. In her memoirs The Prime of Life she points out that the dialog between Pyrrhus and Cinéas was very much like the one she had had with herself, noted in her private diary, on her twentieth birthday. When asked by Cinéas what he would do after having conquered Africa, Asia, 38

35 Arabia and India, Pyrrhus replies that he would then rest, whereupon Cinéas asks him why he would not prefer to rest immediately, without conquering anywhere. This What use is it all?, she writes, had already spoken to her as an inner voice in 1927, long before the Second World War and long before Sartre s Being and Nothingness had denounced the vanity of earthly pursuits in the name of the Absolute and Eternity. 90 So Pyrrhus et Cinéas is permeated with an almost unbearable tension: the striving for an absolute goal, where the senselessness of having to transcend comes to a rest, at the same time demonstrating the impossibility of an absolute goal. 91 Gradually all possible absolute goals are traversed only to then be dismissed as un-realizable: the stoic silence is rejected as pure inwardness just as is the attempt to place God s will as the absolute goal; but also humanity as a whole can serve us neither in the form of solidarity, nor in the form of progress as the absolute goal. For within humanity one only comes in contact with certain people and one is always located in a certain situation. 92 However 90 Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, p Hazel Barnes underlined in her debate with Margaret Simons that Beauvoir had just as many other people of her epoch searched for an Absolute, that could have been put in the place of the lost God and could have given her life a new direction and value. However, it should not be concluded from this that Beauvoir had anticipated Sartre s thoughts in Being and Nothingness, let alone developed them. Sartre emphasized the impossibility of justifying existence through a preassigned purpose by showing the effort of the human being wanting to turn himself into a thing that would be useful for something, like a hammer. Hazel Barnes, Response to Margaret Simons, in: Philosophy Today, Vol. 42, De Paul University Chicago, Illinois 1998, p Simone de Beauvoir, Pyrrhus et Cinéas, p